Keep fit! A Survival guide for accountants in a pushbutton world;

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KEEP FiT!
A Survival Guide for Accountants
in a Pushbutton World
You are an animal. Despite thousands of
years of cultural development and scientific advancement, man
still remains tied to basically the same mammalian body
structure as his ancestors of prehistory, And this means that
your body needs more exercise than turning the steering wheel
of an automobile or pushing an elevator button.
Historically, the more advanced civilizations
recognized the importance of physical
activity. The Greeks of the classical
period (about 500 B.C.),
founders of the Olym-pic
Games, put athletics on a par with philosophy and drama
and the arts. The classical Greek concept of the ideal human
bod^that of the all-round athlete—is displayed and admired
even today in museums around the world. And from the Latin
comes the expression mens sana in corpore sano—a sound
mind in a sound body.
But if our own society has tended to underemphasize
participation in athletics while glorifying the "star" player and
spectator sports, its genius for statistics has made quite clear
certain dangers inherent in the way we live. For it is the way we
live that all too often causes the way we die—much too soon. By
far the leading cause of death in the United States is heart and
blood-vessel diseases.
According to the American Heart Association, some 1.06
million people in this country died from heart and blood
vessel diseases in 1973—54 percent of deaths from all
causes for that year. Hypertension, or high blood
pressure, is one of the most common forms of
cardiovascular disease (CVD). It is
estimated that more than 23 mil-lion
adults have high blood pres-sure,
or one in every six. Despite
the fact that hypertension is
usually controllable, it is also one
of the most dangerous diseases, since
half the people with hypertension don't
even know they have it and only 10 to 20
percent of those with high blood pressure have it
under adequate control. Hypertension is considered
a major contributing factor to heart attacks and strokes,
the two leading causes of deaths from cardiovascular diseases.
In addition to hypertension, other variables appear to influ-ence
a person's susceptibility to CVD, such as heredity, age and
even sex (men are more prone to cardiovascular diseases than
women). Obviously there is nothing an individual can do about
his or her heredity, age or sex,